3rd lesson: Gleaner foursquare and writing

Today was a catchup day to make sure we stayed on schedule before our trips. I came in early to read some of the students' baseline writing examples as well as score the art and fiber art pretests. As expected, the pretest scores were very low.

To begin our lesson Cindy reminded the students about the mini lessons on writing they'd been learning in the past week, including writing in paragraph form, using sensory words, using signal words (shown above), and beginning and ending with and interesting question or idea to catch the reader. I was unfamiliar with the term "signal words" so I asked the students to explain what it meant. Afterwards I had one group help distribute our sketchbooks.

While I set up our projector and image, I asked the kids if they remembered the title of our painting (The Gleaners), the name of the artist (Jean Francois Millet- we pronounced it again as a group), if they remembered how many kids he had (9), and if he lived in the city or the country (country). They remembered quite a lot of information! Once our image was up and ready, I asked the kids if they could tell me what they saw in the picture (many called out shapes and colors they could see). I revised to ask what THINGS they could see, because the shapes help describe objects and people in the pictures (then they responded trees, houses, a man on a horse, grass, women). When a student said "Grass", I said, well it's not grass, it's WHEAT. "Does anyone knows what we use wheat for?" (cereal, bread, cream of wheat, crackers). I explained that the wheat in our crackers grows in a field like in the picture, and that nowadays we have machines that cut down the grain, and trucks to carry it to factories to be processed into flour and baked goods. I asked if they remembered when the painting was made and how old it was (1857- about 150 years ago). I said that things were different back then and people had to do all the work.
I switched to a slide that only showed the background. "Is this far away or close to us? How do you know" (responded, far away because the things are small). I then explained the story of the background: the man on the horse is the boss, and all the people back there are working to harvest the wheat and stack it up to take to the barn. Then I switched to a cropped foreground view of the Gleaners. "Are the ladies close to us or far away and how can you tell?" (response- close to us because they're bigger). "Why do you think the ladies are far away from the other people?" (responses- they have a different job, they're slower, etc.) I explained that the ladies do not work for the man and they've gone into the field after the workers have already harvested the wheat.
I asked everybody to stand up, select one of the characters and try to take the pose of one of the women to feel their bodies. "What are they doing?" (response, picking up the grass and wheat). "Let's pretend we're picking up the wheat, bend over, pick some up and put it in your basket, bend over, pick up some more, etc". "How does it feel?" (my back hurts...) "Can you imagine doing this all day long in the hot sun, and your poor and hungry?" "Now how do you think the ladies feel?" I explained that the Gleaners are people who pick up and use what was left behind by other people, and these women are working in the field to get the leftover wheat so they have food to eat.

Having looked at the art, experienced the women's pose, and learning the story, it was time to write about it.
I passed out the new foursquare organizer and asked the students to glue it into their sketchbooks. I explained we're going to write a descriptive paragraph about one of the women in the picture. I said they should imagine they need to explain this picture to someone who has never seen it before and  use as many details and sensory words as possible to give the reader a clear image in their head. I reviewed each square and asked the students to respond by completing the sentence in each. The squares were :
-Describe what the woman looks like and what she's wearing, -Describe what the woman is doing, -Describe how the women feel, and -describe how you feel when you see this picture or what it reminds you of. Students moved at their own pace filling out their foursquares. Cindy and I moved around the room helping students stay on track, offering tips, and checking when students were prepared to start their finished writing.
When students were complete we asked them to draw a picture of what they thought their woman did NEXT. I reminded them to use details they noticed in The Gleaners, and remember line, shape, color, and depth elements. Some of them are very inventive and detailed, and I hope to go back and document some of them.